


choke damp

by someotherstorm (rumbrave)



Category: Justified
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 16:27:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rumbrave/pseuds/someotherstorm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>choke damp: the atmosphere in a mine after an explosion; so-called for its ability to asphyxiate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	choke damp

**Author's Note:**

> this is set sometime during/post season 1 -- just a character vignette. with angry kissing.

**choke damp**

“The thing about you, Raylan,” Boyd says companionably, “Is that you’re always angry.” He tilts his head, grins at Raylan sideways and slow. 

Raylan’s leaning against a tree, going for that sprawl he wears as comfortably as that stupid hat. But there’s tension in the lean lines of his body, his muscles won’t quite settle in the familiar pattern. “Well, now, maybe that’s ‘cause I don’t like you much. You ever think of that?” 

Boyd laughs. Not loudly, but the birds scatter in the trees anyway, fluttering off to parts unknown. Things spook easily here, always have. “Maybe. But I don’t think that’s the whole of your many complicated parts. You were born angry, Raylan. Like all you ever took from your mama’s milk was rage.”

“Maybe I was bottle-fed,” Raylan offers, joking in that way he has when he wants to pretend something isn’t bothering him. He’s got a smile like a grinning skull, a warning for dead men thinking about telling tales. “Must’ve been an off-brand. Probably on sale.” 

“Ha, ha,” Boyd says, but his amusement is genuine -- he’s always appreciated Raylan’s quick-wit, even when it’s so clearly a mechanism of defense arranged all neat and tidy around the fortress he hides inside. But everyone else Boyd knows thinks slow as molasses dripping off a spoon, and there are some days his patience for it wears thin even though he understands how it happens. 

The soil here doesn’t nourish much of anything, and the smoke from the mines suffocates whatever manages to grow. After a while, it’s easier just to open your mouth and choke. Boyd feels like he’s been holding his breath in defiance since the day he was born. 

Raylan, now, it’s no surprise he’s good with a gun. He’s just like that piece he wears -- all elegant lines and glossy slick shine, a hollow chamber filled up with sharp things that kill. His daddy’s fists and the mines and Winona, all condensed in neat rows and aimed at someone else. 

Boyd knows all about how it feels to take the full impact of Raylan Givens’ anger. That shot in the chest almost killed him, but it wasn’t the first time Raylan took aim at his heart and pulled the trigger. 

“This all you wanted to talk about, Boyd? Me being angry, and how it’s my poor dead mama’s fault?” 

Boyd looks up at the sky, the clouds heavy and low with rain. “I won’t say a word against the dead, Raylan. Your mama’s spirit rose up and away, there’s no guilt left to tether it here.”

“You know, I forgot how goddamn weird you talk. Say it like a normal person, Boyd, or I’ll tether your ass to this fucking tree and hit you with my gun.” Raylan sounds more weary than genuinely threatening, as close to petulant as he ever gets. His head is tipped down, the shadows in his eyes hidden by the brim of his hat. 

“All right. You’re angry and you don’t admit it. Never have. Your daddy fucked you up --”

Raylan’s laugh is as brittle as the dead dry leaves beneath his boots. “Well if anyone knows what it’s like to be fucked up by their father, I guess it’d be you.”

“That’s to be certain,” Boyd says patiently, hands folded like he’s praying. He doesn’t pray anymore. Every time he tries to close his eyes and give his thoughts over to God, he sees his men hanging in the trees; sightless eyes and bloody clothes, bodies knocking together like windchimes. There’s a phantom ache in his fingers, too many hours spent clenched around a shovel, digging shallow graves in unforgiving soil. “Difference is, I admit it.” 

“You admit to just about anything that gets you what you want,” Raylan says dismissively. 

There’s truth enough to that. Boyd has to remember the way Raylan gets at him -- takes what Boyd thinks is special and makes it sound like it’s nothing much at all. 

“We are not talking about me at the moment. We’re talking about you.” Boyd hurries on, doesn’t like the smirk Raylan’s giving him, the gleam in his eyes that says _got you, didn’t I_. “And how you’ve always thought being angry means yelling and breaking shit, fists descending like God’s judgment from on high.” 

“I don’t have time for this,” Raylan says, pushing away from the tree. “You want to philosophize or whatever the hell, do it with someone else. If I’m angry all the goddamn time, it’s because I got people like you around who can’t just say shit straight out without usin’ so many goddamn words.” 

“Well, now, you know me, Raylan. I sure am fond of using my mouth.” Subtle inflection and a half-register drop of his voice is enough -- the flat, cold dislike in Raylan’s eyes melts into something hotter, something brighter but just as mean. 

“Think you meant runnin’ your mouth. And I know enough about you, Boyd, to know I ain’t in a hurry to know more.” Raylan’s accent is pure Eastern Kentucky -- not the sort he showed up back in Harlan with, the pretty kind that makes ladies think of Rhett Butler and opened doors and gentle kisses in the moonlight. 

This one’s rough with coal-stained syllables, coming from jagged places deep down in the dark. It makes Boyd think about the mines with their shadows broken by a hellish glow, how Raylan tasted like smoke and fear and the way his fingers left bruises on Boyd’s skin. 

 

They’re standing very close to each other. In the distance, something moves in the tangle of branch and leaves -- the presence registers in both of them in ticks and twitches, but neither of them look away to see what it is. Their sudden silence is more dangerous, made heavy by the impending storm and the weight of everything that’s always been between them.

Boyd breaks it first, like he always does. “This place is in your blood, Raylan Givens, and it runs as deep as the coal in these here glorious mountains.” Boyd lifts his arms, spreads them wide to encompass Harlan and Eastern Kentucky and wherever else people systematically kill themselves just to make a living. “And just like coal, it heats up all nice and slow. So you don’t even notice it’s on fire until it burns you.” 

Raylan’s mouth sets in a grim line. “If you’re tryin’ to tell me to watch my goddamn back, could’ve just _said_ that. Fuck, no one ever said this shit to me in Miami, even folks who didn’t like me too much. It wasn’t, _oh, Raylan, here’s a long-winded shitty attempt at waxin’ poetic about a hurricane before I try and put one between your eyes._ You know what they did, Boyd? They tried to _shoot me_ , not bore me to death with convoluted coal metaphors.” 

“Similes. That was a _simile_ , Raylan. Similes use _like_ or _as_ , remember? You should’ve spent more time listening to Ms. Moss in English class instead of trying to get Becky Todder to meet you out by the bushes.” Boyd shoves his hands in his pockets, ignoring the echoes of a long-forgotten resentment. “You did know that was mountain laurel, right? Just checking. Despite managing to pass what I am _sure_ is a very thorough and difficult federal examination to become a Marshal, sometimes you aren’t very good at deciphering the pretty from the poisonous.” 

“Sometimes you aren’t very good at knowing when to shut up.” Raylan’s standing like he’s planted in the ground, growing roots that Boyd knows from past experience he won’t tend to like he should. He’ll just pull and pull until he thinks he’s free of them, but they’ll always be tangled around his ankles and dragging him back. 

Boyd grins disarmingly. He knows his smiles like Raylan knows the make and model of his guns. There’s more than one kind of weapon. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Bet you have.” Raylan pushes away from the tree, stalks towards him with that lazy, predatory grace he grew into along with his frame. “There a point to all this?” 

Boyd takes a step closer, and it’s the same as it ever is -- each of them is trying to make the other back off, but all that happens is they end up closer together. There’s a simile -- or even a metaphor -- in there somewhere, but the heat from Raylan’s body is distracting him. Raylan’s chest moves with uneven breaths. “Maybe you shouldn’t run towards the smoke, Raylan. That’s all.”

“Boyd?” They’re so close now that Boyd feels Raylan’s breath fall warm on his forehead, like a benediction. Or a curse. 

“Yeah, Raylan?” He sucks in a breath as he feels Raylan’s hands on his sides, a shock even through the heavy fabric of his coat. 

The world turns in a blur of brown and green, and Boyd ends up with a tree at his back. Raylan leans in, and Boyd resists the urge to knock his stupid fucking hat off. “Thanks for the warning, but you know what they say -- where there’s smoke, there’s a ninety-nine point nine percent chance there’s a would-be redneck philosopher with a pack of matches in his pocket.”

Boyd opens his mouth to speak, but he opens it underneath Raylan’s and all his clever words fall to ash in his mouth. Raylan kisses him like he did the first time, when they were young and desperate to breathe air that wasn’t poisoned. Boyd kisses him back, remembers the way Raylan climbed on top of him in his truck -- clumsy back then with his height, his hands trying to keep Boyd pressed back against the seat. The way Boyd twisted and fought, just to make Raylan try harder to keep him still. 

Raylan’s doing it again, now -- hands tight on Boyd’s shoulders, pushing and shoving him back against the tree even though it’s obvious Boyd isn’t going anywhere. Maybe he just likes feeling the impact jarring through Boyd’s body. Maybe he just wants to make sure it hurts. 

It always hurts. The ties that bind them are concertina wire. 

The sky shudders with a sigh as it starts to rain. Just one more thing to go unnoticed, unmentioned.


End file.
